The Sacrifices We Make
by ElegantButler
Summary: Murray's daughter is in critical condition after an accident while Bryce is facing his own mortality.
1. Chapter 1

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future

The Sacrifices We Make

Murray hated hospitals. He had hated them as long as he could remember. He hadn't even been present for the birth of his only daughter. That was one of the reasons his wife had eventually divorced him.

Now he had to go. That same daughter he'd failed to greet properly when she came into the world was in danger of leaving it. And he would be damned if he failed to say goodbye.

Annie had been in a car accident along with her mom. Rachel herself had a fractured knee and broken wrist, but Annie had got it much worse.

They had been curbside at the time of the accident. Annie's seat belt had been off. She had been getting ready to get out of the car, when the speeder and fishtailed their car, sending it flying and throwing her several feet and into a store front. The glass she'd hit and withstood

the impact far better than she had.

Her bones were mending now, and there had been fortunately no head injuries as she had hit the storefront in a crumpled heap. But there were still internal injuries, and they were severe.

He wished he'd known sooner. He didn't speak to Rachel often and had a habit of not answering her calls. So it hadn't been until she'd actually called him at the office, something she never did, that he realized this was more than just a demand to know why her alimony check was so late.

That same morning, Bryce had sat across the desk from Dr. Duncan. The network physician's face had been careworn. It was the face of a doctor who had been news. Bryce had known what the news was. He'd been delivered the blow a few weeks earlier.

Cancer.

At sixteen, you weren't supposed to get cancer. Then again, at sixteen you weren't supposed to have a top-flight job at the best television network in the world, either. Bryce supposed this was just the universe's way of making sure everything was properly balanced. Bryce also figured the universe could go to hell. This wasn't fair. Not fair at all.

He'd actually cried for a bit before reminding himself that crying would not cure him and drying his eyes. He'd spoken to the doctor about medicines that might shrink the tumor. It had been a long shot, but they'd decided on one and Bryce had been taking it ever since.

"I'm afraid the tumor has grown in size rather than get smaller," the doctor now told him. "The pills have had no effect on it. I'm going to stop them."

"So, how long do I have?" Bryce asked, sounding as afraid as he was.

"A month at most," Dr. Duncan told him. "I'm sorry."

That had been just a few hours ago. Now, Bryce was in his studio trying to keep his mind off his impending death by reading the persona files of his fellow Network 23 employees. He found it interesting that he wanted to know so much about them he hadn't really cared about before. Why now, he wondered, briefly. He discarded that line of thought as it brought him back to the doom he was trying to ignore for the moment.

He opened Murray's file. Murray never did like him very much. The man was a technophobe. Bryce often wondered why he took a job at a TV network. He never seemed comfortable in what he did. Like a nervous long-tailed cat in a rocking chair store.

There was a note about Annie's accident. Annie was Bryce's age and was in critical condition. Many of her internal organs had been damaged and she was on life-support as well as other machines that functioned in their place.

Bryce reached for the vu-phone keypad and called the medical center.

A matronly woman appeared on the screen. "What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to see if I could donate organs for a specific patient," Bryce told her. "How would I go about doing that?"

Murray was at Annie's bedside with his ex when the doctor walked in. He wished he could have given her something. A kidney. He had two after all. But his organs were too old, and he could not. It hurt him that after everything else had had failed her at, he had also failed to save her life. A father was supposed to do that for his kids. But neither him nor Rachel was organ-compatible with their teenaged daughter.

The doctor walked in wearing an unreadable expression on her face.

"It seems I have good news for you," he told Murray and Rachel. "We've found a donor."

Rachel was the first to look up with some hope in her eyes. "Then my baby will live?"

"We'll begin surgery in a few hours. The operating room is currently occupied with another accident victim. But as soon as it's cleared and cleaned we'll begin."

"Thank you," Murray told him.

"Who's the donor?" Rachel asked. "I'd like to say thank you."

"They're probably already dead," Murray reminded her. "Probably a new arrival at the body bank."

"Actually, it's a living donor," the doctor told them. "He just found out he's only got a month left thanks to brain cancer."

"So he's opted for euthanasia?" Rachel asked, sadly. "Surely not just for Annie?"

The doctor shook her head. "He's in a lot of pain. And there's nothing anyone can do for him. He hides it well, but a good doctor can see that he's suffering."

Rachel stood up. "Where is he?" she asked.

"I'll take you to him," the doctor offered.

Murray didn't go. He knew it would be the polite thing to do. But he also didn't want to leave his daughter alone.

Bryce was seated at the window of his hospital room when Rachel walked in.

"Hi," she said to him, a tone of sadness in her voice. It hurt her to see that he was the same age as her daughter. She wished he was older. "I'm Annie's mother, Rachel McKenzie."

"Bryce Lynch," Bryce told her. "I worked with your ex-husband at Network 23. I was reading some of the employee files. That's how I found out about Annie."

"I wanted to thank you," Rachel told him. "I wish none of this were happening. If fate had been kinder, maybe you and Annie…"

Bryce looked at her for a moment. He could see the sadness in her eyes. She probably figured that he and Annie might have become good friends. They were the same age after all. And she was probably right. Assuming anyone could pry Bryce away from his work long enough to actually talk to Annie.

Rachel herself had concocted a scene in her mind where Bryce would eventually marry Annie and the two would have kids and eventually even grandchildren. In a fairer world. But this world was not fair, and soon Bryce would be dead. And there was no guarantee that the surgery would be successful. Rachel hoped it would be.

"Tell me about yourself," she implored. "I want to get to know the young man who's doing so much for my daughter."

Bryce talked for about half an hour. Telling her about his time at ACS, his work at the network, and his friendship with Edison, Theora, Max and even Murray.

Finally the door opened. The doctor and a nurse walked in.

"I guess this is it," Bryce told her. "Tell Annie I'm sorry I didn't get to meet her."

Rachel nodded and left the room. The last she saw of Bryce was him getting back into the bed that would soon be wheeled into the operating room where organs would be collected before he was… She stopped thinking about it. It hurt too much.

She walked into Annie's hospital room. Murray looked up.

"What's wrong?"

"The donor's no older than Annie," Rachel told him. "Just a boy."

Murray didn't know what to say about that, so he remained silent as she went on about her fantasy of how this boy and Annie might have been friends or even married in a better world. He let it wash over him until he heard Rachel say. "He said he worked with you."

"Bryce," Murray groaned. He wished he had gone to see him now. But now it was too late. Bryce was in the operating room, under anaesthesia, and… Murray didn't want to think about it.

He also didn't want to think about what he was going to tell Edison or Theora. If he'd known sooner… If Bryce had told him, Murray would have insisted that they go to the hospital to say a proper goodbye.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 02

Edison looked up at the clock on the wall of the Control Room for the nth time. Finally he turned to his controller, Theora.

"What's on the news feed?" he asked. He couldn't wait any longer for Murray to come in and assign him a story.

Theora brought up the general news feed and began reading out their coverage options.

"Simon Peller's down in the popularity polls again."

"He can stay there," Edison told her, not impressed with how Peller often treated the Blanks. He had friends in that community. "Next."

"The Vu-Age Church is offering a half-price sale on Salvation."

"God gives it away for free." Edison remarked. "Anything else?"

Theora had an inspiration. "Why don't you go ask Reg if the Blanks are doing anything of interest? Like some kind of party or street festival. It would be a great human interest story."

Edison smiled. "Now, that would be a story I could really get behind."

He shouldered his camera and was turning to leave when Murray walked in, looking like the weight of the world was upon him.

"Afternoon, Murray." Theora said.

"Where were you?" Edison asked, any anger at his producer's tardiness was subdued by the look on said producer's face. "What's wrong?"

"You'd both better come into my office," Murray told them.

Theora stood up, exchanging worried looks with Edison. Both of them were wondering how bad it could be.

It was far worse than either imagined.

As soon as the door was closed, Murray let out the breath he'd been holding. He'd been trying all the way home to think of a way to break the news to them. He'd worked out several speeches, each one as useless and long-winded as the next. There was no way to soften the blow. No way to take away the pain he knew they would both feel. Bryce was their friend as well as their teammate. No, he'd decided in the end. There was no way to say it that would make it any easier for them.

"Bryce is dead."

Theora's face fell as she sat down, heavily. She'd like the teenaged genius as if he were a second brother to her. Tears welled up in her eyes and she swallowed back the lump that formed in her throat.

"How?" Edison demanded, hoarsely, collapsing into a chair. "Murray he was fine yesterday."

"No, he wasn't," Murray explained. "I don't know why he didn't tell us…"

"Tell us what?" Edison demanded angrily. "Murray, did Bryce kill himself?"

Murray shook his head. "It was euthanasia, not suicide."

"Why? And how did you know? When did you know?" Theora demanded. "Murray, why didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't know," Murray told her. "Rachel, my ex wife," he explained when he saw their confused looks, "called me to tell me our daughter was in a car crash. I went to the hospital to see them. The doctor said there was a donor. I should have gone to thank him, but I didn't want to leave Annie alone. If I'd gone, I would've known. I would have called you in to… to say goodbye."

"But why would Bryce…?" Edison asked. "What was wrong with him?"

"I don't know all the details. Just that he had some form of cancer and that he didn't have very long. He must've been hacking our info to keep his mind off it. I guess he found out about Annie and decided… " Murray fell silent, regretting how poorly he'd gotten along with Bryce while he'd been alive.

"I assume you had his remains moved to Gladhand Meadows?" Theora asked.

"After what he did for Annie? Yes," Murray told her, nodding. "That's the least I could do. I still need to tell Cheviot. I'm assuming he'll give you both some time to grieve. But just in case he doesn't, do you have a story in mind?"

"I was going to see what the Blanks are up to," Edison told him.

"Human interest story," Theora explained.

"Good," Murray told them. "That'll keep the viewers happy for a while. Why don't you go and visit Reg, Edison? I have the feeling after the news I just gave you, you'll want to talk to a friend."

"I think I will," Edison agreed, as he turned and left the room with Theora trailing behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Reg put his arm over Dominique's shoulder as she wept in the corner booth at the ouzo bar.

It had been Reg's idea to get a round of drinks to soften the blow when Edison had told them what had happened.

"How's Theora taking it?" He asked while Dom had driven the bus, which also served as Big Time Television's base of operations, to the bar and found a place to park.

"Not as well as she seems to be, I suspect," Edison guessed. "Bryce was a good friend. I mean, I know he got you into that bit of trouble…"

"And he got me out of it again," Reg said. He'd let bygones be bygones ages ago. Bryce had just been protecting his old alma mater, after all. And Reg had to admit he'd probably want to do likewise, though he would have found another way.

"He was a good kid, Edison," Dom said as she took a long swig of her drink. "His last act proves that."

Edison knew he should say something. He had spent years as a reporter for the world's top Network. Had broadcast powerful revelations that had made and broken the rich and the powerful. He was one of the most influential people on Network television who had made impassioned speeches on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden as well as in praise of those few who had both wealth and conscience.

Now, however, grief had silenced his eloquent tongue. There were no words to say. No enemy to lash out against. When Paddy Ashton had died of night terrors as a result of taking an unsafe medicine that was supposed to be nothing more than a dream-enhancer, there had been someone to blame. Edison had been reprimanded for physically assaulting the man responsible. But it had felt good, for a moment, to vent that anger.

Now there was only a sickness to be angry at. An ages-old enemy that still stalked humanity, not caring whether its victims were young or old, male or female. It was an enemy that had so many forms. Some were treatable, others were not. Some had treatments that might eradicate it from the body for a time. But it came back, and sometimes it came back hard.

For Bryce it had taken only once. Edison had run into Dr. Duncan on his way to his car. And after much persuasion, the doctor had revealed that Bryce had been suffering an inoperable and cancerous brain tumor. There was nothing that could be done. In another month, he would have been dead, and in the meantime, his brain would have suffered significant damage. Even if it hadn't affected his mental capacity by then, it would have most likely left him blind and paralyzed for the last couple of weeks. Edison knew that Bryce would never have wanted to live out his days that way.

So, in silence, he sipped his drink and listened to Dom crying across the table while Reg patted her back and ran out of things to say.


	4. Chapter 4

Lauren and the rest of Network 23's board members sat at the board room conference table. They were waiting for their boss, Ben Cheviot, to take his place at the head of the table and begin their everyday routine. The talk was always the same. The network's ratings took center stage, and everything else seen through a filter of how those ratings might be affected.

Today, Cheviot had walked past the board room table and into his office wearing a look on his face that said he did not want to be interrupted. He closed the door with such a deliberate click that even Lauren, who had what Cheviot considered an admirably bad habit of minding other people's business when it looked like it needed to be minded, had stayed out this time.

"Any idea what's going on?" Ashwell asked.

"I'm sure Mr. Cheviot will tell us when he comes to the table," Lauren told him. To be honest, she wasn't sure at all. She hoped he wouldn't try to keep it locked up. It was always bad news when people did that. They might be okay for a while. Sometimes even years. But it always came back to bite them. And it usually bit hard.

Cheviot's office door opened and the grey-haired man trudged over to the table. His eyes were red.

"Surely the ratings aren't that bad," Ashwell joked, trying to lighten his mood.

Cheviot turned a glare on Ashwell which made the younger man blanch with embarrassment. This was clearly no time for humor of any kind.

"What happened?" Lauren asked, gently.

"Who died?" A board member whose name escaped most of them asked, unthinkingly. It was the kind of question that often got asked without thought when a person wore an expression as sad as Cheviot's was at that moment.

That man would've given anything to take back the question when Cheviot replied "Bryce Lynch."

There was a silence at the conference table that seemed to stretch for hours, though it probably only lasted a few minutes.

"How?" Lauren asked.

"He had brain cancer," Cheviot told them, wondering if he should mention the part about Bryce's euthanasia and the donation to Murray's daughter. It had been a noble gesture. But Cheviot knew that some of them did not approve of euthanasia, no matter what, and he didn't want to start a decided not to mention it.

"Poor Bryce," Lauren said. "I hope he didn't go to one of those awful body banks."

"Those are only for poor people," Ashwell pointed out. "Not people from the networks like us."

"Untrue," Edwards reminded him. "Carter's first controller, Gorrister, ended up in one of those."

"That was when Grossberg was the boss," Ashwell argued. "Cheviot would never allow one of us to end up in those terrible places. I'm sure Bryce was properly cremated and his ashes were placed whole in a nice plot at Gladhand Meadows."

"He was placed at Gladhand Meadows," Cheviot said, leaving out the bit about organ donation as there were a couple of people on the board who did not approve of such things, and he did not want to hear them bad-mouthing Bryce's parting gesture.

"I'd like to visit the grave," Lauren told him. "I want to say goodbye."

Lauren had once taken soup to Bryce while he had been sick with headache and fever. She wondered now if that had been the first signs of the cancer that would later kill him.

"I'm going after work," Cheviot told her. "You're welcome to join me." He put up a hand and shook his head to belay any other requests. He didn't want to bring everyone. Just Lauren.

There was an awkward silence. Everyone knew that they needed to discuss the day's ratings. This was still a TV network after all. Business would go on, even if Cheviot himself died. But Bryce was so young. Not even twenty. There was something almost sacrilegious about moving onto the next subject after bringing up his death. Like chatting about the game in a church right after the preacher has delivered a powerful sermon.

Nobody spoke. Even Ashwell kept silent. Cheviot was grateful for that.

Finally, he did break the silence. He had a network to run after all.

"I've given Carter and his team the night off," he explained. "Bryce was a close friend of theirs and I felt it was the least I could do under the circumstances. So there won't be an Edison Carter show tonight. We need to discuss what we're going to replace it with as it will have a strong impact on our ratings."

This got the ball rolling. They had just been waiting for him to give the okay signal on the new topic.

"What about that interview with Mark Mason that Fields did last week? The one we had to scrap because of that Peller scandal?" Edwards asked. "The Scumball finals are next week after all. That would tie in nicely."

There was a murmur of approval. The viewers loved their sports after all. Almost as much as a good scandal.

"How soon can Fields have it updated and ready for broadcasting?" Cheviot asked.

"By this evening," Edwards told him. "I'll tell him to get working on it right away."

Cheviot took a deep breath, then let it out. "Lauren and I are taking a few hours to visit Bryce's grave. The rest of you, I want working on the rest of tonight's shows. We'll need to shuffle a few things around to keep ourselves at the top of the ratings war. We may have suffered a casualty, but the fight continues. This is no time to let our rivals get the upper hand."

He stood up and nodded for Lauren to follow him.

A moment later, they were both gone, leaving the rest of the board members discussing both that day's ratings and the death of their youngest co-worker.


	5. Chapter 5

It was late in the afternoon when Reg's vu-phone went off. Dom had finally stopped crying an hour earlier and was going over the bills. She looked at her cigarette holder, but since a good friend had just died of cancer, even if hadn't been the kind associated with smoking, she couldn't bring herself to light up. She imagined the habit would win over eventually, but for now she was determined to ignore it.

Reg clicked on the receiver and saw Blank Bruno's face on the screen.

"I thought we were going meet this morning," he said, sounding displeased. "We were going to go over Orville's idea for broadcasting an education program on Big Time."

"Sorry, mate," Reg apologized. "Edison dropped by."

"And he's more important than Blank education."

"Of course not, Bruno," Reg shook his head. "Only…"

Reg knew that Bryce had been Bruno's student. The two had chatted about Bryce and his former classmates on more than one occasion. Reg had been worried about what type of influence the power-hungry networks would have on his former pupils. Now Reg wondered if he should tell Bruno what had happened. It was Edison's news, not his. But Bruno had a right to know. And Reg would be damned if he was going to keep this a secret from the man.

"Only what?" Bruno asked. "What was so important about Edison's visit? What news did he have this time? More bad news concerning Peller?"

As far as the Blanks were concerned, all news concerning Simon Peller was bad news.

"Bad news, yes," Reg told him. "But not about Peller. It was about Bryce Lynch."

"What's happened to Bryce?" Bruno's face took on a pained expression.

"Bryce is dead, Bruno," Reg told him, watching with sympathy as the other man sank into his chair. "Edison said he had cancer and opted for euthanasia. His ashes are at Gladhand Meadows."

"Cancer," Bruno said, bitterly. "No doubt from all those damned toxic waste barrels Carter did that report on a few months ago. Why doesn't someone do something about them before we lose more good kids? Carter did a good report. And we know they're there. Damn it!" his face was as red as his hair as he disconnected the vu-phone in anger.

Reg turned to Dom. "You okay, kitten?"

"Not really," she said. "I keep thinking about him. Bryce I mean. He was a good kid. I just wonder what he would have been like as an adult, if he'd had the chance to become one."

"It's a shame we'll never find out." Reg agreed.


	6. Chapter 6

-CHAPTER 06: The Future Is Bright-

"No reading at the dinner table."

Bryce McKenzie closed the old fashioned book she had been reading as her mother came to the table carrying a plate of chicken.

"If you haven't washed your hands, please go do so. And put your shoes on," Annie told her daughter as she set the plate on the table. "Then you can help bring the rest of the food to the table."

Annie didn't regret being a single mother. Ever since the car accident almost thirteen years ago, she had decided to have as full a life as she could. She had wanted a husband and a family. But when none of the young men she had dated seemed to be quite what she was looking for, she decided that she did not want to compromise, and simply did without.

She had still wanted a child, however. And after looking at several options, she decided that she wanted her own. Adoption would be fine at some point, when she was ready for a second child. But the first one had to come from her.

She had gone to Ovu-vat. It had taken a longer time than she'd expected. There were all kinds of test. Mental health. Intelligence. Cellular cleanliness. In the end, they deemed her worthy of their services.

At this point, however, Annie had been so disgusted with their elitism, that she had refused to go any further with them and had gone to an underground competitor who worked in a small house just beyond the river.

They worked with a form of cloning which was only technically legal, but their facilities were clean and the staff were pleasant. They talked Annie through the process, explaining how the cells were extracted and converted.

"We use cells from internal organs because they are the healthiest cells our bodies contain," the doctor had explained to her. "We don't take from the heart or lungs, because they do not handle possible scarring very well."

When they'd seen the scars from her earlier surgery, the doctor had asked her about it.

"I was in a car crash," Annie had explained. "I got both kidneys, small intestine, and pancreas from a donor who later died of brain cancer. Euthanasia the same day."

"Noted," the doctor said. "We can remove the cancer gene from the cells if we take a part of them from those organs. Genetically it would be the same as if you and your donor had a child together."

Annie smiled at this thought. The boy who had given her so much, life itself in fact, would now be able to give her the child she'd always wanted.

"That would be lovely," she had said. And from that moment she hadn't looked back.

Now Bryce McKenzie was nine years old. And while she was as smart as her dad had been, she was much less disciplined.

Annie could hear the commotion from her daughter's bedroom. It sounded like it was being torn apart as it always did at this time every night.

"They're in the living room," she called.

Bryce came running out of her room and into the living room, nearly falling over the family dog as she rounded the corner.

"Sorry, Lex," she said, bending to pet the dog as she sat down on the sofa and put her shoes on.

"And now you may wash your hands again," Annie said in a long-suffering tone.

"Aw, come on, mom! Lex isn't dirty."

"Bryce…"

"Okay," Bryce returned to the bathroom, washed her hands a second time, then returned to the kitchen to help bring the rest of the food to the table.

"You looking forward to tomorrow?" Annie asked.

Bryce shrugged. "I guess so," she said. "I'm going to miss Alison and Sam."

"I know," Annie sympathized. "But you know how you'r always talking about how your teachers don't get you and how you feel like you're being held back. Your father went to ACS when he was your age. He told your grandmother about it before he went to Heaven."

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. Annie didn't like to talk about Bryce's death. The doctors at the cloning facility had been true to their word about removing the cancer gene before the process had been performed. But Annie did not believe in perfection, and so for her the specter of that cellular assassin had always lingered.


	7. Chapter 7

-Chapter 7: First Day at ACS: Part One

Theora walked to the podium near what was meant to be the front of the gymnasium. She had seen this room once before. Years earlier when Nicholas and his fellow zippers had been trying to, quite literally, build a better mousetrap.

This was her first day working at ACS. Following the breakup of Edison's team a year after Bryce's death, she had stayed on at Network 23 in Control for a couple of months, working with Janie Crane, until she had to admit that she missed Bryce too much to bear staying there any longer.

She had spent the next five years working at the Fresh Start, the restaurant where her brother had worked. First as a dishwasher, then later as a waitress. It wasn't enough to afford the apartment she'd moved into after she'd begun work as Edison's controller, and eventually she had to move to a smaller home.

In that time, she had eventually fallen out of touch with everyone else, except her brother. She had grown closer to Shawn over the past few years and took to babysitting his daughter, Kristen, on weekends so that Winnie could have a break.

That had ended when Kristen had turned 10 and had been enrolled at ACS thanks to some financial aid from Theora, which Shawn promised to pay back, though Theora knew he would never be able to afford to.

It had been then that the old SysOps had suggested that she apply for a teaching job with them. But at that time, she had turned them down. It had been about 9 years since Bryce's death, but it still had felt too close for her.

But that had been four years ago. And during that time, Theora's heart had finished healing. She still missed her friends, but she found she no longer teared up when she thought of them. Instead, her lips would turn up in a smile as she remembered how well they had all worked together.

The students filed in and stood around the room, two or three to each table. Boys and girls, all between the ages of 9 and 12. They spoke to each other, probably about their goals and whether or not today's meal might be considered edible, until Theora cleared her throat into the teacher's mic.

"Good morning," she said in a strict but cheerful tone. "I am your Sysop, Theora Jones. Before we begin, I'd like to have each of you introduce yourself to me and tell me a little about what you expect to get out of this academy."

"Didn't you work for Network 23, Miss Jones?" a girl's voice asked.

"Many years ago," Theora confirmed, "miss…"

"Bryce McKenzie," the girl replied, looking directly at Theora.

Theora felt as if she had been struck by lightning. She grabbed the podium and steadied herself. "Bryce… who are your parents?"

"Annie McKenzie was my mother," Bryce explained.

Theora suspected that the truth about her parentage would take longer than they had to explain.

"I'd like to see you after classes," she said. "You're not in trouble. I just have some complicated questions to ask you."


End file.
